All Things Translation—February 2024 at CAT

We’re ready to tackle 2024 with revitalized verve, because we are extremely pleased to say we have been awarded $40,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts(opens in a new tab) to support the work of Two Lines Press. (opens in a new tab)

This grant will support efforts to diversify publishing by bringing stellar contemporary literature in translation to new audiences. As we continue to spotlight international authors previously unpublished in English, this award enables us to broaden our readership and provide unwavering support to translators throughout the publication process.

In addition to the NEA grant, we are so proud that Two Lines Press was recognized on the $35,000 Republic of Consciousness Prize Longlist of Independent Presses in United States and Canada.(opens in a new tab) Of the 10 fiction books awarded for literary merit, Cross-Stitch by Jazmina Barrera (trans. Christina MacSweeney) was among four novels in translation represented within the honorees.

We are so grateful for the recognition and support that allows Two Lines Press to continue bringing the work of authors and translators from all around the globe to readers. Thank you to the NEA and the Republic of Consciousness for bringing more light to the international literary scene!

Submissions are open for the Peirene Stevns Translation Prize 2024! Aimed at emerging translators from Dutch to English, the winning translation will be published by Pereine Press in the UK(opens in a new tab) and Two Lines Press(opens in a new tab) in the US in 2025. Translators of any nationality are eligible and submissions are open until March 4 at 12 pm GMT.

The prize winner will receive a £5,200 commission to translate Dutch author Eva Meijer’s Zee Nu, a translation retreat in the French Pyrenees, and a mentorship from International Booker Prize-winning translator Michele Hutchison.

Established in 2018 with the generous support of Martha Stevns to provide opportunities for emerging translators, the prize is open to any translator over the age of 18 who has not yet published a full work of fiction in translation. 

Entrants must translate the selected sample of Zee Nu into English and submit it along with a translator’s note and a CV. There is a £15 entry fee (for exemptions see the guidelines). 

Behold—our first release of 2024! Two Lines Press(opens in a new tab) is proud to present About Uncle, “a monstrous little novel” that has been known to “delight and disgust” (read all the testimonials by clicking the button below)! This short and gripping novel is set to release Feb. 20, 2024—and your preorder makes sure that it arrives at your doorstep ASAP.

From the website: At an age when she’d rather be making her own way in the world, an unnamed young woman finds herself moving to a small town at the seaside to care for her uncle. He’s a disabled war veteran with questionable habits, prone to drinking, gorging, and hoarding—not to mention the occasional excursion down into the plumbing, where he might disappear for days at a time. When the world starts to shut down, Uncle and his niece become closer than ever. She knows his every move—every bathroom break he takes, every pill he swallows—and finds herself relying more and more on this strange man, her only company in a shrinking world. But then Uncle’s health takes a turn for the worse: He’s sent to a hospital that cares for cats, dogs, and Uncles, and any way for her to make sense of this eerie new reality, and her place within it, falls apart.

“Wry and funny and rich in strange new forms of discomfort, About Uncle is a slim volume that cuts deep, revealing the soft ligaments of family relations and letting them gleam under the light.”
—Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun

March 5, 2024 | The Lab | The Redstone Building | 2948 16th St. |  San Francisco, CA | 6:00 pm PT

One of Poland’s best living poets, Tomasz Różycki, and award-winning poet and translator Mira Rosenthalpresent To The Letter, the third collection of Różycki’s poetry to be translated by Rosenthal. The reading will be followed by a conversation about writing and the art of translation as a process of losing and the longing we feel for our own absence with Judy Halebsky.

Tomasz Różycki’s To the Letter follows Lieutenant Anielewicz on the hunt for any clues that might lead 21st-century human beings out of a sense of despair. With authoritarianism rising across Eastern Europe, the Lieutenant longs for a secret hero. At first, he suspects some hidden mechanism afoot: fruit tutors him in the ways of color, he drifts out to sea to study the grammar of tides, or he gazes at the sun as it thrums away like a timepiece.